Near 10-year and longer periods modulate circadians: intersecting anti-aging and chronoastrobiological research

Cyclic stroke mortality variations follow sunspot patterns

Background: Mapping time-structures is a burgeoning scientific field enriching the (P4) medicine models. Local evidence in Mediterranean populations is underinvestigated. Methods: The Censused stroke-related death events (D) in the largest East-Mediterranean port (Piraeus), during (1985-1989), when local population had diet (low fat/sugar, proteins and vegetables/fruits daily, and pure olive oil almost exclusively) and genetic homogeneity-later interrupted by the immigration into Greece in 1990; and Sunspot numbers were indexed by Wolf numbers (Rz) (1944-2004), and evaluated using Fast Fourier Analysis and Singular Spectrum Analysis in MATLAB. Results: D were turned with fluctuations >35% in Rz. A non-anthropogenic 6.8 days cycle was recognized. Conclusions: This study may be taken into consideration in future public health planning and chronotherapy evaluations.

The Impact of Ionospheric and Geomagnetic Changes on Mortality from Diseases of the Circulatory System

We investigate the impact of solar activity changes on mortality from cardiovascular causes of death in the period 1994-2011 in the Czech Republic. This period coincides with the time of solar cycle no. 23 and the surrounding minima when there was an unusually low level of solar activity. We use long-period daily time series of numbers of deaths by cause, solar activity indices (the relative sunspot number, and the intensity of solar radio flux), geomagnetic indices (Kp-the planetary index that indicates the fluctuation rate of horizontal components of the geomagnetic field, the Auroral Electrojet, and the disturbance storm time), and physical parameters describing the ionospheric effects (the critical frequency of the ionospheric F2 layer and the content of free electrons in the ionosphere). The results of the analysis confirm the hypothesis that there is no direct correlation between the geomagnetic solar index, Kp, and the number of deaths from acute myocardial infarction (code I21) or brain stroke (code I64) during the maxima of the solar cycle. On the other hand, the ionospheric parameters explain a greater part of the variability in the number of deaths for acute myocardial infarction or brain stroke than the model with solar parameters. The analysis shows that, because the values are geographically specific, the ionospheric parameters may describe the variability in the number of deaths from cardiovascular causes better than the solar indices. The cardiovascular diseases thus respond to the changes in the solar activity and to abnormal solar events indirectly through a concentration of electrical charges in the earth's environment.

27-day cycles in human mortality: Traute and Bernhard Düll

This tribute to her parents by one co-author (NDP) is the fruit of a more than a decade-long search by the senior author (FH) for the details of the lives of Bernhard and Gertraud ("Traute") Düll. These pioneers studied how space/terrestrial weather may differentially influence human mortality from various causes, the 27-day mortality pattern being different whether death was from cardiac or respiratory disease, or from suicide. FH is the translator of personal information about her parents provided by NDP in German. Figuratively, he also attempts to "translate" the Dülls' contribution in the context of the literature that had appeared before their work and after their deaths. Although the Dülls published in a then leading journal, among others (and FH had re-analyzed some of their work in a medical journal), they were unknown to academies or libraries (where FH had inquired about them). The Dülls thoroughly assembled death certificates to offer the most powerful evidence for an effect of solar activity reflected in human mortality, as did others before them. They went several steps further than their predecessors, however. They were the first to show possibly differential effects of space and/or Earth weather with respect to suicide and other deaths associated with the nervous and sensory systems vs. death from cardiac or respiratory disease as well as overall death by differences in the phase of a common 27-day cycle characterizing these mortality patterns. Furthermore, Bernhard Düll developed tests of human visual and auditory reaction time to study effects of weather and solar activity, publishing a book (his professorial dissertation) on the topic. His unpublished finding of an increased incidence of airplane crashes in association with higher solar activity was validated after his death, among others, by Tatiana Zenchenko and A. M. Merzlyi.

Chronomics, human time estimation, and aging

Background

Circadian rhythm stage affects many outcomes, including those of mental aging.

Methods

Estimations of 1 minute ~5 times/day for a year, 25 years apart, by a healthy male biomedical scientist (RBS), are analyzed by the extended cosinor.

Results

Cycles of a half-week, a week, ~30 days, a half-year and a year, in self-assessed 1-minute estimation by RBS between 25 and 60 years of age in health, are mapped for the first time, compared and opposite effects are found. For RBS at 60 vs at 25 years of age, it takes less time in the morning around 10:30 (P < 0.001), but not in the evening around 19:30 (P = 0.956), to estimate 1 minute.

Discussion

During the intervening decades, the time of estimating 1 minute differed greatly, dependent on circadian stage, being a linear decrease in the morning and increase in the evening, the latter modulated by a ~33.6-year cycle.

Conclusion

Circadian and infradian rhythm mapping is essential for a scrutiny of effects of aging. A ~30-day and a circannual component apparent at 25 years of age are not found later; cycles longer than a year are detected. Rhythm stages await tests as markers for timing therapy in disease.

Chronoecoepidemiology of "strain": infradian chronomics of urinary cortisol and catecholamines during nightly exposure to noise

This meta-analysis of published data (Noise Health 5 (2002) 35 and 47) summarizing a survey for 40 days of the nightly excretion of urinary free cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine validates a circaseptan cortisol pattern anticipated and reported earlier for cortisol, here not detected for the catecholamines. We also quantify a circadecan (about 10-day) variation in nightly norepinephrine excretion, but not in the excretion of the other two hormones examined. About 4.2-day variations, common to norepinephrine and epinephrine, and an about 4.7-day variation in cortisol await further scrutiny, since these components were not anticipated. Infradian characteristics are quantified time-microscopically and differences among infradian aspects of the spectral element of endocrine chronomes (time structures; from chronos, time and nomos, rule) are demonstrated. Chronomics, the cartography of chronomes, reveals that "stress hormones" need to be examined separately in a budding chronoepidemiology seeking to detect how humans interact, mostly for better, sometimes for worse, with the undesirable features of the technology they create and of its consequences, such as aircraft noise.

Circasemiannual chronomics: half-yearly biospheric changes in their own right and as a circannual waveform

Geomagnetic activity has a strong half-yearly but no precise yearly component in its spectrum, as Armin Grafe suggested nearly half a century ago. We have postulated elsewhere that non-photic cycles such as those in geomagnetics may have signatures in the biosphere and vice versa that biological rhythms have likely counterparts in the physical environment. Accordingly, we document phenomena characterized by a prominent about half-yearly variation, re-analyzed to constitute the start of a transdisciplinary chronomic (time structural) map, aligning these conditions with a half-yearly cycle in the geomagnetic index Kp. At least some biospheric phenomena fitted concomitantly with 1- and 0.5-year cosine curves exhibit an amplitude (A) ratio of A(0.5-year)/A(1-year) larger than unity. Methodologically, it is pertinent that even if data were read off published graphs, the resulting analyses were practically the same as those in the original data received subsequently. The main point is a circasemiannual pattern in status epilepticus, in several morbid oral conditions, in the cell density of vasopressin-containing neurons in the human suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN), in circulating melatonin at middle latitudes at night during years of minimal solar activity or around noon at high latitudes, and in an unusual circasemiannual aspect of a birth-month-dependence of human longevity. Others have asked whether annual rhythms in human reproduction are biological, sociological or both. We show some other possibilities herein, involving the physical environment, hardly to be neglected in the case of open systems. As to almost certainly multifactorial circasemiannual rhythms, geomagnetics may also be a signal, a proxy or a putative, at least partial mechanism. Geomagnetic activity is related in its turn to solar and galactic activity, and may be a marker for other cyclic events that affect the biosphere. The similarity of cycle lengths in itself can only be a hint prompting the search for causal relations.

Chronomics of tree rings for chronoastrobiology and beyond

Gliding spectral windows illustrate the changes as a function of time in the relative prominence of signals in a given frequency range, viewed in 3D or as surface charts. As an example, the method is applied to a 2,189-year series of averages of ring measurements on 11 sequoia trees published by Douglass. Analyses of the original data and after filtering reveal, among others, components with periods of about 10.5 and 21 years similar to the Schwabe and Hale solar activity cycles. An alignment of gliding spectra with a global spectrum serves to define, by minima, the ranges of variability around the anticipated Schwabe and Hale cycles. This procedure may have more general applicability when dealing with ranges of only transiently synchronized, wobbly, and perhaps sometimes free-running periodicities. Solar activity is known to affect climate and changes in climate are reflected to some extent in tree growth. The spectral structure in tree rings could serve not only to check any relations of climate with sunspots, auroras and more modern measures of solar activity, but also to check any purely mathematical extrapolations from the much shorter available actual data on solar activity. With such extrapolated series and the data analyzed herein, the task remains to align physical and physiological variables to further study the influence of natural environmental factors near and far on biota, including international battles, which cover an even longer span of 2,556 years.

A chronomic tree of life: ontogenetic and phylogenetic ‘memories’ of primordial cycles — keys to ethics

A scientific optimization may become possible in ethics to the extent to which any reproducible since cyclic features of spirituality and of criminality become measurable. Should either or both the 'good' or the 'bad' be found to be at least passively influenced by cyclic physical environmental factors, as is putatively the case, these aspects of behavior may eventually become actively manipulable, perhaps utilizable for human survival. Toward this goal, chronomics has already mapped time structures in religious behavior that can lead to a study of underlying geographic/geomagnetic latitude-associated mechanisms. This paper, with further but clearly insufficient data, revealing the hurdle of relative brevity of the available time series constitutes a plea for much longer and denser worldwide time series, for further endeavors in various methods of analyses, some of which are promisingly available.

Chronomics: circadian and circaseptan timing of radiotherapy, drugs, calories, perhaps nutriceuticals and beyond

We suggest a putative benefit from timing nutriceuticals (substances that are both nutrients and pharmaceuticals) such as antioxidants for preventive or curative health care, based on the proven merits of timing nutrients, drugs, and other treatments, as documented, i.a., in India. The necessity of timing melatonin, a major antioxidant, is noted. A protocol to extend the scope of chronoradiotherapy awaits testing. Imaging in time by mapping rhythms and broader time structures, chronomes, for earliest diagnoses, for example detection of vascular disease risk, is recommended. The study of rhythms and broader chronomes leads to a dynamic functional genomics, guided by imaging in time of free radicals and antioxidants, amongst many other variables.

Transdisciplinary unifying implications of circadian findings in the 1950s

Afew puzzles relating to a small fraction of my endeavors in the 1950s are summarized herein, with answers to a few questions of the Editor-in-Chief, to suggest that the rules of variability in time complement the rules of genetics as a biological variability in space. I advocate to replace truisms such as a relative constancy or homeostasis, that have served bioscience very well for very long. They were never intended, however, to lower a curtain of ignorance over everyday physiology. In raising these curtains, we unveil a range of dynamics, resolvable in the data collection and as-one-goes analysis by computers built into smaller and smaller devices, for a continued self-surveillance of the normal and for an individualized detection of the abnormal. The current medical art based on spotchecks interpreted by reference to a time-unqualified normal range can become a science of time series with tests relating to the individual in inferential statistical terms. This is already doable for the case of blood pressure, but eventually should become possible for many other variables interpreted today only based on the quicksand of clinical trials on groups. These ignore individual differences and hence the individual's needs. Chronomics (mapping time structures) with the major aim of quantifying normalcy by dynamic reference values for detecting earliest risk elevation, also yields the dividend of allowing molecular biology to focus on the normal as well as on the grossly abnormal.

Non-photic, non-thermic circadecadal solar cycle interaction with cardiovascular circannual and circasemiannual variation in heated air-conditioned habitat

In order to re-examine the extent to which secular circulatory variation can be resolved into possibly accountable, if not yet predictable behavior, the 15-year record of blood pressure and heart rate of an adult male cardiologist (Y.W.) is reanalyzed. Gliding spectral windows with an interval of 4 years progressively displaced throughout the data series examine monthly means from August 1987 to August 2002. A circannual variation is only intermittent and appears to drift for years. A circasemiannual variation is consistent and prominent, yet only for a fraction of the record examined. By contrast to the circadian rhythm in blood pressure and heart rate, which is reliably detectable in most subjects in clinical health, the circannual variation in the human circulation is inconsistent and hence should be monitored, as in this case for its assessment as one goes, a conclusion that also applies to the circasemiannual variation, prominent for years but not detected thereafter. The results prompt the search for interactions between the photic, thermic and societal effects of the seasons that, if solely pertinent, should yield a consistent 1-year spectral component. That non-photic effects may also play an important role may point to modulation by solar cycle stage and solar cycle number, perhaps mediated by the solar wind. This conclusion is extended in proof to the role played by the most recently discovered transannual component in human blood pressure and heart rate, which is a probable further signature of the solar wind. The beating of the transannual and circannual components documented on another data series may contribute to the lack of a consistent 1-year synchronized circannual variation in this case and many others.

Blood pressure self-surveillance for health also reflects 1.3-year Richardson solar wind variation: spin-off from chronomics

Self-experimentation concerns not only scientists, but also each individual for the sake of his/her chronobiologic health and science literacy, eventually to be acquired in primary and secondary education. Public education ensures that everybody who knows how to read or write can dispense with the service of a costly scribe. At all ages, public education can teach equally well how to find out whether one's blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) responds to an increase in sodium intake with a rise, with no change or with a decrease in BP. This task and many others could become a matter of informed self-surveillance. Whenever there are inter-individual, sometimes opposite differences in response, government-sponsored trials on groups that do not consider such differences cannot solve what only the individual can do, at first by help from schools. Eventually special institutions may be designed for chronomics, the monitoring, interpretation and archivization of chronomes (time structures; from chronos = time and nomos = rule) of biological variables, also charged with a demographic analyzing and reporting system. Each individual's properly coded record, to guard confidentiality, becomes part of a promptly accessible database for one's own needs and for society's requirements. What individuals and small groups started as chronobiology, what is immediately available on back burners, as a service by an international project on the biosphere and the cosmos (BIOCOS) (corne001@umn.edu) could become a public system of planned surveillance archivization of one's rhythms from womb to tomb. Alterations of a rhythm's amplitude or acrophase or of a deterministic or other chaotic endpoint, such as a correlation dimension and approximate entropy, or of a standard deviation, among a multitude of other endpoints, can signal (in the otherwise neglected normal range) reversible risk elevations. If these elevated risks are detected and prompt the institution of countermeasures, such prehabilitation can save the cost of rehabilitation or of long-term care after morbid events; suffering also can be prevented such as that by those who are unlucky enough to helplessly survive a massive brain, heart or societal "stroke". As an equally important dividend, science gains in basic and applied terms, as illustrated herein by the demonstration of a trans-year, an approximately 1.3 to 1.6-year, heretofore unknown component of the human BP and HR spectrum, beating with the circannual component and characterizing the same data. Chronomically interpreted self-monitoring is a civic duty for both one's health and everybody's science.